You haven't seen such a law yet. Not a surprise since we don't even have any vehicles on the market at this point.

No, and I can't cite laws on responsible use of teleporters or home cloning tanks either. But that's because the law is almost never written in anticipation of technology.

You are tossing around fantasy land scenarios to scare people about cars. Tracking and spying on people is one thing, but locking them in a box and whisking them away to somewhere they don't want to be preys on several common phobias. No one would stand for it -- not at least until the frog's been warming in the pot for a much, much longer period of time.

(P.S. I don't think you actually know what an ad hominem attack is. Google it.)

Most crowded traffic is the result of impatient drivers with poor reflexes constantly riding up the driver in front of them and then having to slam to a stop when the car in front of them brakes. This propagates backwards and creates traffic waves. Interestingly, all it takes is one driver to put an end to stop-and-go traffic.

Now imagine that 5% of the cars on the road were replaced with driverless cars that not only give the car in front of them plenty of room but also signal ahead to other driverless and safety assisted cars (e.g. ones with predictive braking) what they are about to do. Imagine that these cars didn't rubberneck or get angry and tailgate or cut people off without signaling first, because they don't have emotional humans driving them.

Imagine a world with no traffic jams thanks to driverless cars.

OT: That list is incomplete and has a few things changed or that he never actually said. You want "25 things I have learned in 50 years" from his book Dave Barry Turns 50.

Snopes has the debunking, if you're curious.

That's pretty much exactly the opposite of what he was saying -- that if the car itself can count as the driver, then there's nothing to report, because the person isn't driving at all. It isn't illegal to be any of those three things as a passenger right now.

This is just ridiculous FUD / trolling at this point. No one would buy a car that would do this. There's no market for it.

They didn't, really. If you click through the "next" links in the lower-left, you'll eventually see that North Korea claimed that they had zero fatalities, just like Uzbekistan, another tyrannical state, claimed (i.e. take both with a grain of salt).

Another panel notes that underreporting is a major issue in the developing world and that Pakistan's claimed rate is significantly under what experts estimate. The reason we don't have anything to contradict North Korea is the lack of free data you allude to.

It's a poorly edited summary. As I posted above in response to a similar comment, the full text shows that they're trying to change the perception that because traffic deaths are accidental that they're unavoidable.

Well, if you're going to nitpick, then I'm afraid we have to go deeper. After all, it should be pointed out that the worst death rates are in developing countries where motorbikes and motorscooters are a dominant form of transportation. No cars involved, so "cars kill" is incomplete.

Here's the full paragraph it mangled:

The U.N. is trying to change perception that traffic deaths are unpreventable.

If I recall correctly, your thesis was that diets filled with manufactured foods was the real culprit behind their weight gain, and the lack of wild animal weight gain proves the point. If you compare wild animals and those fed off of processed foods, you fail to control for the vary external factors that this study raises as possible culprits.

If that wasn't your thesis, then please explain what bringing up the African wildcat was supposed to illustrate.

I don't think you understand what the phrase means. It doesn't mean to have a favored side. It just means that you "have a stake in the outcome of the problem at hand" or if you have no dog in a fight, then "you are not concerned and will not be affected either way by the outcome of something." Here, have a few more citations.

The "dog" doesn't have to be a favored side that they're betting on. Neither side may be appealing to them, but they most certainly care about the progress of the civil war and whether or not it turns into a greater regional conflict that will suck them in.

How does focusing on a species that lives in national parks in an unindustrialized part of the world negate the notion that environmental impacts other than process food which are endemic to modern, industrial life have an influence on weight gain?

Your proposed "control" fails to differentiate between diet and non-diet influences by removing both from the equation. It's essentially irrelevant to the thesis at hand.

That's what's being promised. Sounds ambitious.

Because nerds aren't all clinical sociopaths more interested in the method of killing than the fact of it.

Plus, being a nerd is all about caring about some important, intellectual topic that the mainstream doesn't see the point in compared to who the latest pop star is sleeping with. Few things are nerdier than international policy, even though most of it is carried about by non-nerds. (Kind of like baseball.)

You need to look up a little place called the Golan Heights and its history and tell me again that Israel has no security interests in Syria. They've actually traded shots a few times over this neutral territory since the war began, after Syria sent in a few tanks last November.

That's even without Hezbollah and Iran's involvement with Syria. Remember that both got involved in the Lebanese Civil War on opposite sides, and Israel basically kicked Syria's ass. As neighbors of Israel, Syria is a huge issue and one that has a choice between bad (Assad as a proxy of Iran) and worse (a country run by Sunni militants).

You mean like the air and missile strikes they've launched on Syrian government forces aimed at preventing supplies being sent to Hezbollah in Lebanon in January, May, and July of this year?

For the most part Israel isn't taking sides per se, but they aren't staying out of it at all.

I'm pretty sure the article said, "As were laboratory macaques, chimpanzees, vervet monkeys and mice, as well as domestic dogs, domestic cats, and domestic and feral rats from both rural and urban areas." (emphasis added)

I'm pretty sure feral rats are wild animals, though they do feed off of human food. Of course, if you want to eliminate any species that eats human food, you're also going to reduce or eliminate almost all the other potential influences listed in the article -- regulated indoor temperature, excessive light exposure, exposure to industrial chemicals, exposure to the Ad-36 virus or to M. smithii, etc.